Tag Archives: Linkedin Site Changes

You may have noticed a resurgence of hashtags on LinkedIn over the past few months and you may also have seen some extra areas popping up around the site as well to help their usage.

It seemed appropriate therefore to have a delve into just how we might use them effectively on LinkedIn, both from a publisher’s perspective and also as a reader / consumer of content.

And if you think “Nah, hashtags aren’t for me” then you might be right but, on the other hand, you might find that there’s some real business use built in and that it’s not all just #hashtaghypebutnotreallyuseful

Using hashtags as an Author / Publisher

So why bother with hashtags when you publish on LinkedIn? As you may have noticed, LinkedIn has started to encourage us to use hashtags every time we post, whether that is an update or an article, giving us some suggested initial selections which are based on your past usage and also on the text you have inserted.

LinkedIn has been prolific in the last few months in rolling out a huge range of new elements across the site, often first on the mobile devices before then trialling and releasing them on the main desktop version.

One such feature that seems to have just received the ‘desktop treatment’ is called Kudos which was released about 6 weeks ago on mobile and allows you to thank specific people in your network for standing out in some way. They do this by giving you the chance to create and post an update containing an image which looks rather like a type of digital postcard, thanking that person for standing out in some way.

Now before you switch off, that’s really quite a nice thing to do. We know how powerful and important ‘Recommendations’ are on the site and while there are some amongst us (my hand’s firmly ‘up’ at this point) who are less convinced about ‘Endorsements’ because of the rather random way they are given by some (hey, I have double figure endorsements for my skill in ‘Extreme Ironing’ which is fairly random in itself), (more…)

Since I started on LinkedIn, the site has always recommended that you only put your email and contact information in the official places – phone number goes in the phone contact field, email address in the email field and so on.

I could see the logic in that – there were automatic settings available to hide these from anyone that you weren’t connected to so the control was there. The trouble is that I wanted to be contacted by people I wasn’t connected to … that was my raison d’etre for being on the site.

If I had piqued their interest with something I had written, a comment I’d left or just what was in my profile then I wanted them to be able to get in touch, so I added my email address in particular to my Summary section so that it was visible to all.

Not exactly within the strict guidelines of the site but practical for what I wanted to achieve. (more…)

There are some layout changes to the Personal Profile page which are being rolled out at the moment on LinkedIn – this is following a similar phase to other roll outs with a beta phase coming first and then extended across the network.

You may not yet have it but forewarned is forearmed so here are the changes I’ve noticed and some recommendations for 4 key elements where the emphasis has shifted.

[I’ve also highlighted some Points To Note (PTN) that I feel warrant a special mention – forgive me the use of yet another acronym but NB didn’t really seem to cut it anymore.]

What’s changing?

Well, for those of us who are yet to receive the new format, here are the two side by side: (more…)

There’s been a slow drip feed of information since August when LinkedIn announced that they would be making big changes to the interface and it has subsequently turned out, some equally large changes to aspects of the functioning of the site.

Probably.

I say probably because even those with the beta version of this new interface have been experiencing a developing system with multiple changes since it arrived some 4 weeks ago, and no doubt will continue to do so as the process develops.

What we can be sure of is that we do need to be prepared and to make sure that we have our data secured so that we are prepared for whatever awaits.

These are 6 actions, I would therefore encourage you to take:

1) Back up your Profile

The format of the profile (and certain content elements of it too) is changing with the new interface so it’s a good time to make a back up to make sure that you retain all of the information that you have put in there. (more…)

There are in reality constant changes to LinkedIn in one way or another – these might take the form of quite big changes or additions on occasions and sometimes much smaller elements which can still cause issues.

This is one of a sporadic series of posts highlighting some of these changes.

Asking 3rd level connections to connect

When you are on the profile of a 3rd level connection, you will no longer see the “Connect” button. The ‘Connect’ option is still there, but (more…)

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